NaNoWriMo

I had honestly never heard of NaNoWriMo - see here - until she who must be obeyed mentioned it last night. The idea is that you write a novel in 30 days. Starting on 01 November and finishing on 30 November you succeed if you write 50,000 words. That's 1,667 words per day, assuming you write every day. The focus, the web site declares, is on quantity, not quality.

Mulling it over while driving to work this morning I decided there was no way I could manage the challenge. At least, I thought I had made that decision until I switched on the radio only to find I had tuned into a feature on the subject. Freddie Forsyth (against) and Ian Rankin (for) were debating the practicalities and whether the writer taking part is doomed to produce crap. This was a spooky bit of serendipity bearing in mind it was Halloween last night.

So, I've had a go at making a start. Back home by 7.30pm it took me a couple of hours to work through the demands of wife, kids, animals and miscellaneous other distractions. Finally settling to the task I'm now nearly 700 words into it. This is way behind schedule for the day.

On the positive side I've written 700 words I probably wouldn't have committed to (virtual) paper and started a project from scratch that is very quickly springing into a life of its own. However, on the negative side it's undoubtedly crap.